


Three Cities

by kay_cricketed



Category: Ouran High School Host Club
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-12
Updated: 2009-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 16:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three different cities, three case studies in longing.  In which Hikaru wants, Kaoru despairs, and Tamaki realizes that he is the one likely to be hurt in this relationship.  It's a pity he cares less and less every day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Paris: An Experiment in Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> The first of three stories, the first focusing on Hikaru and Tamaki, the second focusing in Kaoru and Tamaki, and the third focusing on the three of them. They take place in the future; I’ll leave it to your own discretion to imagine when. The stories only take into account the anime and part of the manga timeline.

He’s not entirely sober himself, so they make quite the pair stumbling down the hotel corridor.

The summer nights are overly warm and humid; there is a heavy drag in the air that makes breathing seem more difficult than it has any right being. Hikaru imagines swallowing air like a fish out of water, and isn’t aware he’s actually mimicking the gesture until Tamaki laughs drunkenly against his ear. A hand pushes up at his chin.

Hikaru bats it away.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Tamaki says, cheerfully. He’s got his arms wound tight around Hikaru’s neck and has been steadily increasing the amount of weight he leans on Hikaru as they go.

The overgrown leech, Hikaru thinks, not without some affection. It’s the alcohol, of course.

They haven’t seen anyone on this floor of the hotel so far. Not that Hikaru cares what they look like. They’re just trying to get to the rooms. That’s all. It’s better than staying in the bar, where Kaoru will alternatively snicker at his fumbled words and then switch on an extraordinary amount of twin-ish-ly concern, saying things like _you really ought to slow down_ or _maybe an early night?_ Besides, Tamaki had been getting louder with every minute, and Hikaru has a much higher tolerance for his own public indecency than he does for their Tono’s.

Which is why they’re weaving around on the plush carpet, running into people’s doors (because Tamaki is an idiot, and can’t walk straight, and can’t read numbers, either, apparently). Hikaru thinks, not for the first time, they really should’ve just bought out the whole floor. It’d be so much easier.

“It’s that one!” Tamaki crows triumphantly, pointing at a set of doors.

Hikaru sniffs. “Tono, that’s the elevator.” Probably.

“Buttons,” sighs Tamaki, his exhale heavy with the scent of sickly sweet liquor.

Pressing all the buttons does sound like fun. Hikaru shakes his head. “Bed,” he says decisively. Or rather, beds. He’s suddenly glad for their adjoining rooms and the single door splitting them, if only because he won’t have to go around pathetically looking for his own relief after he’s delivered Tamaki safely, as promised to Kaoru, in a trouble-free zone. “You’re absolutely wrecked, Tono.”

Tamaki says, in a small voice, “I’m drunken.”

“Yeah. It was pretty brilliant ‘til you tried to slide down the bar counter.”

“I did?”

Hikaru wishes he’d had a camera. The blackmail would’ve lasted for another two years. Kaoru’s face had been priceless. “Did you see it in a movie?”

Tamaki hiccups and drags his feet. His bodyweight is dead, and heavy, and stifling hot. Its inescapability is irritating, but Hikaru’s familiar enough with it by now. “You’re sliding, too.”

“No, but I’m drunk,” Hikaru admits. It’s pretty funny, that sliding but not sliding thing, so he laughs.

They pass a set of bleached, white oak doors that look vaguely familiar, so Hikaru takes a second to stop and try their keycard. It beeps and the light flickers red. He scowls at it.

Tamaki’s fingers tangle in his hair. “Says no go…”

“Don’t pull, Tono. I just highlighted it, and I’ll bite you.”

“You’re sliding,” Tamaki whines, but he loosens his grip.

“ _You’re sliding_ , I think.”

“Try again. S’all stuck.”

“Nah, I think I’ll keep going.” Hikaru walks, not surprised when Tamaki slumps against him and half-hangs, half-shuffles his way along. Idiot. He’s never been good with drinks. He loses count too quickly. _At least_ , Hikaru thinks to himself, _I know very well I’m getting drunk._ There’s a fine line between perfectly sober and perfectly legless, and Hikaru prefers to expertly toe it.

“Where’s Kaoru?” asks Tamaki mournfully.

“In the bar. Entertaining the people I’m s’posed to.” Hikaru doesn’t feel too guilty for that; it had been Kaoru’s masterpieces in the show, anyway. Since it’s normally Kaoru’s job to pull Hikaru, acting more intoxicated than he actually is just so he can plaster himself to his twin and incite womanly fantasies in their guests, back to their room, Hikaru doesn’t think Kaoru got too shady a deal. “Do you want Kaoru?”

“I want Kuma- _chan_.”

Hikaru snickers. “How old are you, Tono?”

“Try door 772. It’s all… good door.”

Hikaru obliges, and somehow isn’t surprised when this time the keycard clicks and a tiny green light flashes at the door jam. He pulls the door open before the lock has time to change its mind, and sighs in relief at the sight of Tamaki’s room (the assorted junk that only Tamaki would bring to Paris with him is scattered all across the dresser surface: tourist snow globes, worry dolls, nail clippers, silly coffee mug). The windows are open and let in the vast array of night lights Paris has to offer, casting the walls in oranges and grays. “You win, Tono. That was the door.”

“Yeah? Yeah. I win.”

“That means you only lost…” He doesn’t remember. “A lot.”

Tamaki squeezes him and giggles.

Hikaru has some trouble getting over the door jam—he wishes he understood why his dexterity leaves way before his brain shuts off—but then they’re inside, and Tamaki shuts the door by thudding his entire body against it. It doesn’t look like a planned move; not that he expects planned moves at this point. Then Tamaki raises his arms in the air, thereby releasing Hikaru, his white sleeves falling to his elbows.

“I win,” he repeats again, dazed.

Hikaru rolls his eyes and says, “Stay there.”

“There is where,” says Tamaki, only without the question mark, as he leans back against the door. He closes his eyes, the blond ringlets that humidity had teased into curling sticking to the skin at his temple. Hikaru waits to make sure it’s all right and then throws his shoes in the corner. Free feet are happy feet.

He drinks a few glasses of water first from the bathroom sink, feeling the liquid spill down the corner of his mouth and dampen his jacket. He takes the jacket off. Then, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand, Hikaru grabs the tiny plastic garbage can under the sink. He takes it out to the queen-sized bed and sets it neatly by the head of the mattress. He’s a professional, of sorts. And Tamaki is notoriously bad at keeping breakfast in on the morning after. And the carpet is _nice_ , as far as France goes.

Tamaki is humming against the door.

There’s a plush white robe hanging in the bathroom that is still somewhat damp from the shower Tamaki had taken before going to the show. It’ll have to do. Hikaru doesn’t have the patience for room service, and it’s not like their moron king will know the difference, anyway. He pools the cloth over his arm and then goes back to the door.

“Tono, what song is that?”

Tamaki says something in French. He does that a lot when he’s in Paris, but it’s still annoying.

“Tono,” says Hikaru, irritated. “Take your clothes off. You’re not sleeping in the outfit we designed.”

“I like this outfit,” Tamaki informs him, with the dramatic intoning of one who is imparting great knowledge upon an inferior. Then he says, “You’re not very, very drunk.”

“I’m tired drunk. Shirt. Off.”

The pout looks ridiculous on someone who’s not quite a child anymore, but it’s also Tamaki, and Tamaki can wear anything. “I like this shirt.”

“You’ve said. I’m glad.” But Hikaru can’t help the grin. It’s a freakishly nice shirt, and it was his, from its perfect measurements to its breezy fabric to its subtle but vibrant use of off-white. It’s the closest a white shirt can come to not being white at all, and Hikaru is proud of it, so much so that he’d gifted it to only two. “Tono, come on… You want to go to bed, don’t you?”

“Is that a robe?”

“Yeah. You want it?”

Tamaki deliberates. And grins. “I like that robe.”

Okay, the robe is nice, but it doesn‘t warrant the same love as the shirt. Hikaru steers him to the bed, sits him down, and starts yanking recklessly at buttons, his mouth pursued. Tamaki squeals inappropriately.

“Buttons!”

“You suck at buttons. Let me.” Tamaki’s hand gets in the way, of course. “Tono, let me means keep your sticky fingers out of it and let me!”

“Make up your mind. Take it off, let me do it, here’s a robe, it’s a nice shirt...”

“That last one was you.”

“You were thinking it. I know it.”

Hikaru pulls the shirt off and puts it away safely. When he turns back, Tamaki is shucking off his trousers and shoes at the same time, which isn’t going very well, so Hikaru just stands back and laughs to himself for a little while until it all gets kind of hazy. When he rubs his eyes and comes back to himself, Tamaki is done and looking expectantly at him. He’s got a patch of pink carpet burn on his elbow that Hikaru finds distracting and weird.

Tamaki continues to look expectant.

“What?”

“I’m cold,” sighs Tamaki, and then Hikaru remembers he’s holding the robe.

He goes to get another glass of water, and contemplates calling Kaoru. Then he decides that there’s nothing to really call Kaoru about (though that’s not normally going to stop him), and that the sheets, sheets in Paris, are begging to be rolled around in. Sleep sounds bizarrely enticing. So does another drink. But he won’t. The other drink, that is.

Tamaki is bundled in the robe and curled up against the pillows on his bed when Hikaru comes out of the bathroom. “I’m going to bed,” Hikaru calls.

Tamaki’s hand shoots up and beckons.

Hikaru knows that game. “Tono, I’m too old for bedtime kisses.”

Tamaki moans.

Tilting his head, Hikaru moves closer. Tamaki’s eyelashes are resting on his cheeks like tiny, fingered shadows, and his lips are still wet and bright. His hand flails in the air briefly once more and then falls, wrapping around his own shoulder in a half-hearted hug. He looks, in the lack of light, both utterly comfortable and utterly alone at the same time.

Hikaru studies him and wonders why, even years later, there’s something about Tamaki that’s like vertigo.

The mattress dips as he sits on its edge, and Tamaki stirs a little. He opens his bleary eyes and looks up at Hikaru.

“Just one,” says Hikaru.

Tamaki’s smile is soppy and stupid and—distressingly so—beautiful. “Just one,” he echoes eagerly.

Hikaru waits in patience.

He’s aware, in his peripheral sense of the world, that the hotel room is quiet and the digital alarm is flashing red in the dimness. All other senses are taken up by the gentle touch of fingertips to his cheek, drawing him down without effort and without pressure. All else is swallowed by the press of a mouth to his forehead, more precise and focused than any other movement exhibited by the person in question giving it.

Hikaru ignores the burning in his ears. His embarrassment isn’t nearly as alarming as the drop in his stomach he’s becoming used to.

Tamaki lets him go and makes a sleepy, sated noise that does nothing to help the matter. “Good night, Hikaru.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”

Then he leaves, because he knows enough about physics and the law of gravity. If he stays, Hikaru is going to fall forward, drawn inevitably to the center of the Earth, with pale skin under a soft robe and a welcome tangle of limbs to break his descent. He knows Tamaki well enough without ever having to see the experiment through; there has never been a time their Tono hasn’t left the door open for them. It’s more than a little terrifying, and Hikaru has never exerted so much effort in not taking something that’s been freely, if unknowingly, offered to him.

He goes back to his room. He locks the door between them. And he goes to bed, alone.


	2. Tokyo: A Study in the Classics

They don’t make it back from the museum until late—so much so that it’s almost early—and the Hitachiin mansion is silent and dark.

Kaoru takes his time pulling his shoes off in the entrance hall. There is always something comforting about returning home, even when he’s had an enjoyable night. Some foreign tension in his back eases; he breathes fully. He puts the shoes aside for the maid in the morning, shucks off his coat, and turns to Tamaki. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Oh, don’t wake anybody.”

“I know where our kitchen is, Tono.”

That obviously merits some reevaluation. Tamaki furrows his brow and then nods. “My throat’s dry.”

Kaoru smiles and holds out his hand for Tamaki’s summer jacket. “It’s the wine. It’s always bad at these things, but they must be trying to force people to retire early.”

“It didn’t work very well,” sighs Tamaki, and begins to unbutton at his neck. Kaoru puts their things on the entrance hall dresser, glancing at himself in the mirror: hair skewed from his fingers and a tired sort of appreciation greet him. He spares a wistful thought for Hikaru, who must be sleeping like the dead up in bed, and who will probably find it incredibly disturbing that anyone could manage to spend eight hours at an art gallery opening.

Kaoru isn’t going to tell him that it’s the company that matters, not the art.

They pad down the rich imported carpet, Kaoru leading them through a twist of corridors to the kitchen. Kaoru has to struggle to find a light switch. He might know where to find the room, but actually using it is going to take a little more work. “If I don’t find the glasses,” he whispers to Tamaki, “you’ll have to drink water out of the sink faucet.”

Tamaki snickers. “Will not.”

“You will if you want to drink.”

“I’ll get tetanus.”

“What are you saying about our furnishings, Tono?”

“Isn’t that what happens when you drink directly from a sink?”

Kaoru, as usual, isn’t entirely sure he’s not joking.

Tamaki, perhaps spurred in alarm by idea, finds the cupboard with some of the glass dishware first. They dig in one of the iceboxes until they find milk, for Tamaki, and some fruit juice for Kaoru. There’s no one to bother with their talking, even if they cared, but when they do speak, they do so quietly and with hushed laughter. In the stillness and frozen quality of the early morning, there is a feeling like being encased—they are hardpressed to break the box with a loud voice.

These are some of the good nights.

Kaoru pulls himself up on the counter, legs dangling. His feet don’t reach the floor. Tamaki grins up at him and says, “You said a lot of things there. What did you really think?”

Kaoru considers. “Pretty good,” he says. “For complete garbage.”

Tamaki tries not to laugh and consequently sputters in his milk.

“You thought the same thing,” challenges Kaoru. “You had no idea what half of the sculptures even were. You spent more time hovering near the cakes and trying to figure out if you knew anyone well enough to monopolize them.”

Tamaki brightens. “I knew Inagaki- _san_!”

“You scared Inagaki- _san_ ,” Kaoru corrects him.

It’s true, so the worst Tamaki can do is sulk. He brings himself out of it soon enough, glancing at Kaoru sideways. “So…”

“So?”

“So thanks for letting me monopolize you,” says Tamaki, in the half-serious, half-warm way that only Tamaki can achieve. He makes compliments and endearments out of sentences that have no business being either, and Kaoru has learned over the years that the only thing to do is accept them with the grace they’re given. He does so now, and nods. Really, though he won’t say so, they’re probably monopolizing each other.

“Don’t mention it,” Kaoru dismisses, shutting the matter entirely with the wave of his hand. He sips at his juice, tongue curling at its tartness, and then smiles. “The theory behind it was good, you know. Even if the actual craftsmanship wasn’t. A lot of the busts were from classic Japanese and Korean literature.”

“Yeah. I caught on to that. After _The Holy Man of Mount Koya_.” Tamaki shudders.

Kaoru thinks back and recalls the unsettled, wild expression set in stone by inexpert hands. “Not my favorite story.”

“The commoners were wonderful!”

“Do you know what they were from?”

“You’re going to tell me,” says Tamaki with confidence. Kaoru grins wide and leans forward, sharp elbows digging into his thighs, as if he’s going to impart some secret.

“From _The Wild Geese_. Mori Ogai.”

“Mori,” giggles Tamaki.

Kaoru settles back, pleased. “I bet Mori- _senpai_ has a flock of geese somewhere. I bet he’s their mother.”

They contemplate that image for a few minutes, the soft tock of a clock following a tick in the silence. Tamaki is close enough to touch, a thoughtful and eager expression leading him into daydream. Kaoru abandons his own prematurely in order to study the color change that signals it; the pale blue dawns into a deeper, bruising indigo, intimating a submersion.

He is quiet, and watches, and takes in all.

It can’t last long. Nothing ever does. Tamaki blinks slowly and then turns back to Kaoru, a quirky grin telling him that the daydream had indeed been humorous and sweet. “Can’t you see it?”

“Yeah,” says Kaoru.

They make no more noise for a while longer. The glasses are half full; they sip at them languidly, feeling the length of the day and night and day.

“You know…” says Tamaki, finally.

“Hm?”

“We go to these kind of parties all the time and it’s a lot of fun.” He pauses, obviously uncertain. Probably, Kaoru guesses, not with what he wants to ask, but how to ask it. “But what about Hikaru?”

The words should be an accusation, or maybe a note of guilt. They’re neither. Tamaki is only wondering out loud in the way that he so often does. Kaoru sits up. He crosses his ankles together, tapping his heels against the cupboards, and considers the best way to answer that.

Finally, he says, “This isn’t Hikaru’s kind of thing.”

“Oh, I _know_ ,” Tamaki chuckles. “He’d complain the whole time.”

Kaoru laughs, a private little thing. “He’d have a great time. But no one else who came near him would.” His brother’s sense of appreciation for art, history, and various other cultural endeavors tends to rest on the twisted side. As in, Hikaru isn’t afraid to let his opinion be known, and his opinion is a devious, often embarrassing thing.

Tamaki understands that. Kaoru had known he would; it’s their Tono. “Did it bother you?” Tamaki asks, leaning against the counter. He’s chewing on the rim of the milk glass and Kaoru hasn’t the will or heart yet to scold him for it.

“Not really.” Kaoru had liked it. “But… I felt bad.”

“He’d have fun if we all went together, I bet.”

“Yeah.”

“We could ask him next time. We’ll find a history museum with a lot of cool-looking old weapons and science stuff.”

“We could,” hedges Kaoru. “I think I’d like that.”

A half-tilt of his head sends Tamaki’s bangs falling into his eyes. “If that’s not it, then what’s wrong?”

Kaoru thinks about the many ways he could answer that, and the equally many ways he shouldn’t. Instead, he takes the milk glass from Tamaki’s hand with gentle care. “You shouldn’t gnaw on our dishes,” he says, smiling.

“You shouldn’t avoid questions! Kaoru,” whines Tamaki, “that’s so rude.”

“So is asking questions that might not have comfortable answers,” points out Kaoru reasonably, and he’s relieved when Tamaki answers with a contrite flush.

“Is it not very comfortable?”

_‘I don’t want to share you yet,’_ thinks Kaoru.

No, that’s not quite right. Kaoru doesn’t mind sharing at all. He’s been doing it his entire lifetime thus far, and if he’s going to be bare bones honest, nothing sits exactly right with him until Hikaru has taken up part of the burden, too. Besides, this Tono has always been _theirs_ , in a sense. Even now, he looks at Tono, and he sees Tono grin widely at him, and he thinks that Hikaru should be pressed against his ribs watching this. It’s more so that—that really, when Kaoru goes in for a pound, so does Hikaru, and he _shouldn’t have to_ , not if it’s just Kaoru and Kaoru’s heart doing stupid things in his chest and—

Tamaki takes the glasses of milk and juice out of his hands, a white and red stain respectively circling the bottom of the cups. He puts them in the sink next to him and then turns back to Kaoru to take his hands.

Kaoru startles.

“Forget I asked,” Tamaki tells him, squeezing Kaoru’s fingers with care. “I’ve forgotten.”

Tamaki’s hands are long—piano fingers, Kaoru thinks—and warm without being oppressive. They smell of subtle, pleasing lotion. Kaoru presses them in return automatically and finds their foreignness in his own to be more comforting than they should be. “Okay,” he says.

“Good.” Tamaki smiles at him, teeth perfect, and then pulls away. He turns on the sink faucet and rinses out the glasses briefly. Kaoru looks at the strong curve of his back, and his straight hips, and the delicate way his ears are created. He thinks, _‘Akutagawa. Stories about identities changing, and doppelgangers, and forces beyond your control, and people who aren’t man or woman, just something you don’t understand until it’s too late.’_

Kaoru understands, deeply, Akutagawa.

“I’ll head home,” Tamaki is saying, pulling his sleeves back down by his fingernails, fussing at the inevitable wrinkles. “You look like you’re going to fall over on the floor.”

“I’m tired,” Kaoru admits. He thinks on Hikaru, sprawled in the vastness of their bed, and feels the longing curl in his belly. Warm, safe, same-as Hikaru. But then, what he feels for Tamaki is all about comfort, as well. Sometimes Kaoru marvels that so few years can change so much about how he feels about everything.

“I’m still buzzing. Call me to tell me how your new project goes? Kyouya says if you market right, you’re going to cause a whole shift in the fashion industry.”

Kaoru has to smile at the pride he hears, as strong as what gathers in his own body. “It was Hikaru’s idea.”

“It was your idea, and you just let Hikaru think he had it first.”

“Sure, Tono.”

The morning has become actual morning. Tamaki holds out a hand to help Kaoru down from the counter, and he takes it, thinking about what that means and how that means nothing. Kaoru thinks too much. It’s why he’s in this mess.

He walks Tamaki back to the door because that’s what is polite. Even if every inch of him is thrumming for the cool relief of bed, and Hikaru’s muffled breathing nearby, and a ceasefire from the effects that Tamaki has wrought out of him. Through the glasswork in the door, the sun is a blurry accident of pink.

Tamaki buttons up his jacket.

“Thanks for coming,” Kaoru tells him. It earns him a friendly hum.

He thinks about taking a step, wrapping his arms around Tamaki, and closing his eyes while he holds on tight.

He’s got to stop this.

“Have a good morning, Kaoru.” Tamaki pauses, fingers curled around the golden door handle, and looks at Kaoru for a second. “You know, I think if you just asked Hikaru, you’d be surprised.”

Kaoru has his arms around himself. He hadn’t realized it. He asks, “You think, Tono?” Not because he believes it, but because he wants to.

Tamaki simply gives him a gentle smile and pushes open the door. It closes, and leaves the impression he was never there at all.


	3. Florence: A Bicycle Built for Two

_Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do  
I’m half-crazy all for the love of you_

 

Florence is a conglomeration of dirty, bright colors, crumbling Medieval buildings, and taxi cabs that have no inclination to use their breaks. Most cities are made of patchwork; there is normally some order to the madness, however, and these streets lack even a semblance. Tamaki worries, not for the first time, that maybe he should’ve asked Kyouya to come instead of deferring to his friend’s overwhelming workload. If there’s one thing he can count on Kyouya for, it’s to know which way they’re going.

The twins are, he’s discovered, unable to read a map without arguing. It’s fascinating to watch.

They have a good time for the initial two days, since all the walking they need to do is down the _piazza_ to the markets by San Lorenzo. Hikaru buys all of the cheap, knock-off con artist brands he can, finding great humor in the “Gucci” sunglasses and leather purses. Tamaki is wary because this means he’s going to be subjected to “true fashion” tests, for which there will be ridicule at his answers and taste, all vacation. Kaoru buys two chess sets and a few bound journals. They all eat gelato and hot chestnuts: one for the end of summer, one for the beginning of fall.

No one talks about why they’re here, and for that, Tamaki is grateful.

 

 

He finds the musicians that play on the street corners to be distracting. He knows commoners through Haruhi, but this is an entirely new breed of commoner. These are men dragged to the gutters and trenches with their illnesses and bewilderments and strange cardboard signs and tuna tins. These are young women with hunger in their eyes and scarves to cover their scars. They are the kind he’s always read about, or seen in movies, or had horrific nightmares about. He watches them play, and watches them live, and finds his curiosity dulled not by sadness, but by respect.

The twins pretend they’re not there.

“It’s not the tragic story you’re thinking, Tono,” they tell him.

“She’s not as poor as she looks,” adds Kaoru, and doesn’t explain himself. But he must have come to the conclusion somehow, because Hikaru nods, his gaze flickering past the specters as if they are fog on the cobblestone.

Tamaki says, “It’s not about that.” But they don’t listen.

Tamaki watches the twins a lot, too. That’s nothing new. In the beginning, he looked upon them, and then he looked after them, and now he simply _looks_ , finding their emerging differences to be just as wonderful and worrisome as ever. Hikaru, who stirs his sugar into his expensive coffees almost violently, spoon clinking against porcelain. Kaoru, who will rest against a church and tilt his head back to the warm Italian sky, as if reenergizing himself. After the first week, despite all their squabbles, Tamaki finds himself so glad that they’re here with him. Italy suits the twins like a fine pair of gloves.

They are beautiful, under the sun, and Tamaki loves them.

It deserves repeating.

He loves them, and they don’t quite understand it. They never have.

Tamaki knows this, much in the way that animals know fear and peace and good intentions. It’s not a conscious effort, but an instinctual one. The way he processes the world—in his belly and his heart, Haruhi once said—leaves a great deal of room for simplicity and truth. And the truth is, with simplicity, that he loves Hikaru and Kaoru. Not in a sordid way or in a hungry way. Not exactly in a friendly way, either, or through a paternal sense—though it is all of these things.

It is unconditional, and open, and as deep as the center of blood and marrow. And they know it; they’ve felt it. But Hikaru is frightened of it, and Kaoru despairs, and some part of Tamaki that can’t grasp comprehension is upset for all of that, but he can’t change things. He can’t _not_ love them. He gave up trying a long time ago.

 

 

 

So now, they are in Italy. And even if the trip is for Tamaki’s benefit, he sees the bruising circles under their eyes and knows it’s really not. The three of them have been playing a game too long and without enough rest. He hates the idea that his presence has put that there; that there is a wedge, hard and coarse, aching and driving at them. “You work too hard,” he tells them instead. “You put too much of yourself into things.”

“Tono is a hypocrite,” they’ll say, every time.

That’s not exactly true. Tamaki isn’t very hardworking. Rather, his projects tend to be small in scale and reach, but he invests so much of himself into them that they feel like building cities and airplanes and outer space. He enjoys that part. That feeling of touching something bright, with a future. Everything has its own signature. Haruhi, a cup of flowers. Kyouya, a steel frame with cloth walls. The twins, a melting snow globe on the verge of spring.

He carries them with him, hoping to bring them into the light more and more.

 

 

 

“It’s just a big fat church,” says Hikaru of the Florentine cathedral, looking disappointed. His satchel is knotted over one shoulder.

“It’s a beautiful church!”

“It’s a beautiful church,” Kaoru agrees. Then he shares a secret grin with Hikaru—it’s always secret, with Hikaru—and adds, “But it’s very fat.”

Tamaki stares at the cathedral. “It’s a bit fat,” he finally says.

“See?” They link their arms in his and steer him away. “The horse track, Tono! Let’s go watch the horses.”

“That’s not what you want to do at all!”

They laugh at him.

 

 

 

The real problem, Tamaki decides as the days wear on, is the _eyes_. It’s so much easier to be gentle, and ignore, and not push when he’s somewhere he’s familiar with. Unfortunately, their hotel is grand but tiny, a true staple of Italian hospitality. The rooms are humid and stuffy. They can hardly breathe without breathing each other’s air. And here, it’s much harder to pretend that Hikaru isn’t tracing a word in Tamaki’s back with his gaze, or that Kaoru isn’t considering Tamaki’s hands like they’re much more interesting (and less fat, hopefully) than Brunelleschi architecture.

The twins are brooding, but looking. And it’s driving Tamaki crazy. First, because he can’t make them smile as easily. Second, because it makes somersaults out of his stomach and his neck _burns_ when they do that.

_You were happier when you were only wrapped up in each other,_ Tamaki thinks. He’s fairly sure it’s true.

He, with resolution, does not consider how _he_ feels.

If it had only been strain between the twins and Tamaki, that would’ve been fine. Easy. Piece of cake. But the strain exists between the twins, as well—they’re avoiding each other’s eyes, their walking is not aligned, they _barely hear each other_. They shop, but with words instead of heart, like they’ve said these things to each other enough that they can afford to go on autopilot.

 

 

 

Kyouya, when Tamaki despairs of this over his cell phone, is short and brutal. “They’re not mad at each other. They’re too busy desperately ensuring that the other doesn’t figure out how they feel. Because then, they’ll be mad at each other.”

“Will they really?”

“Well, they’re very contrary that way.”

_It’s called character,_ thinks Tamaki. He doesn’t believe they’d be mad at each other. Isn’t having a twin supposed to mean sharing, and the same, and understanding?

He wonders if they’d be relieved.

“More importantly,” Kyouya murmurs, voice scratchy over the long distance line, “have you decided what to do yet? The Suoh family is in an uproar still.”

“No.” He hadn’t come here to run away, but that’s what he’s doing. “I guess. I guess I should come home.”

“Don’t.”

“Kyouya?”

“She’s dead, Tamaki.” And oh, it doesn’t hurt because they were never, even to the end, very close—but it’s frightening nevertheless. This great expansion of idea and possibility and freedom. “Figure out what you’re going to do first.”

 

 

 

What is he going to do? Isn’t that just the question. Tamaki hangs up and goes to have dinner in a little sidewalk café with dirty red tablecloths. Kaoru comes with him, and they take out the tourist guides and maps and pretend they’re plotting out another week of activities, even if there’s no certainty for how long they’ll be here. Kaoru is a little red on the nose; if he’s not careful, the sunburn will peel. It’s endearing. It makes Tamaki giggle.

“What would you do?” he asks Kaoru, and it’s the first time he’s mentioned what happened since getting on the plane.

“Oh.” Kaoru is uncertain but kind. His answer reflects that. “I’m… not sure it matters, Tono. I think. Maybe—you should do what makes you happiest.”

He pauses, and adds, “I think you should _be_ where you’re happiest.”

Of course it matters. It matters. Tamaki crumbles his crackers in his soup nervously and musters enough of an appetite to fool them both that it’s okay. They buy a bottle of wine and stroll back through the darkening alleyways, and Hikaru is waiting for them on the sofa in the hotel room, a distracted and troubled expression on his face.

Hikaru. His answer is no better.

 

 

 

They’re waiting for Kaoru to find his way out of the Academia, leaning against the stone wall and watching the buses come late. Tamaki notices that there’s orange dust on Hikaru’s collar, but says nothing. The tightness in Hikaru’s mouth is too harsh. Turning closer to him, but not too close, Tamaki asks, “What would you do, Hikaru?”

“Huh?”

“If you were me. And this happened.”

Hikaru spares him a glance. And there’s something tired in Hikaru, and wistful. “Well, first I’d get drunk and dance on her grave.”

Tamaki is so horrified that he throws his head back and laughs.

He laughs, and Hikaru looks at him in that way that is still weary like old, fat churches that are so, so, so full of wishes. And then Hikaru mumbles, like a child, “Don’t go.”

“What?”

“Stay in Japan. Don’t live in France.”

And that’s not funny at all.

Tamaki’s throat burns. But he can’t say, _I won’t._

Instead, he whispers, “God. It’s been so long.” And then Kaoru comes out, and Hikaru storms away, and he’s left looking between them like a bridge that’s stretched out too far.

 

 

 

That night, it rains in Florence.

It pours and batters against their window shutters. The air smells like old death and newspaper, and the world is wet, drowning, lost. Tamaki feels the enclosed space of their hotel room more than ever; it squeezes his organs and makes his knees weak.

The twins are no better. Hikaru paces like a caught tiger, and Kaoru leans back against the sofa, closes his eyes, and doesn’t move.

Tamaki looks at them.

They’re so hard to tell apart sometimes. And sometimes, they’re so easy. That crookedness that lingers in Hikaru, like something bent just beyond perfect. The completely reckless way his emotions color his eyes. At the end of the day, Hikaru feels and lives and rejects everything deeply. His favorites change; he is fickle. He is wild and glee-stricken when he’s happy.

He glances at Tamaki and Kaoru, and then draws back into himself. His face is dark and stormy—a reflection of the sky, only always too close.

Kaoru is like distance. It’s in the way he sits, in the way he studies you, and most of all, it’s in where he places himself in your life. If it were up to Kaoru, Hikaru and Tamaki wouldn’t be close enough to see his strain and joy. And at the same time, Kaoru can’t help but be close to things, to what he loves. Kaoru, even more than Hikaru, is the perfect contradiction. That is how Tamaki feels.

Tamaki can go to Kaoru now and curl up beside him on the sofa. When Kaoru opens his eyes, they are weary.

On the piano, they call this part the crescendo.

 

 

 

“What is it, Tono?” asks Kaoru, quiet.

_And here I fit,_ Tamaki grieves. _Between too close and too far, and there isn’t even a word for that._ And isn’t that the real problem? Isn’t it? Does physical space, like Japan or France or anywhere else beyond here, matter so much when compared to this?

Their world is made for two. There are two seats, and two plates, and two smiles, and two sets of fingernails. Hope, like clock hands, comes only in pairs. Nothing else. They will tire of ones, and threes, and sixteens. They will tire.

But Tamaki loves them.

It deserves repeating, because he does. He loves them.

 

 

 

And because of that, Tamaki bows his head, opens his mouth, and brings them back together in the middle space. “I’m not going to France.”

They say nothing.

“I’m not going,” he tells them. “And there’s more. About us three.” This time, Hikaru stops moving and is still. Kaoru doesn’t sound like he’s breathing.

“I won’t have you,” says Tamaki.

There is silence. His heart trembles. He cannot bear to look; the devastation would kill him, it would really kill him. And if it is relief, then so much quicker the death. “I won’t,” he repeats. “Not you, Hikaru. And not you, Kaoru. You already have each other. If you come to me alone and ask, I’ll tell you the same. I won’t.”

He can hear the clock.

He can hear the clock. Did he… Oh. Had he wanted it so much? Setting them free shouldn’t bleed him this deeply. It hurts. It’s for their own good. It hurts.

It is ironically, unexpectedly, blessedly, Hikaru who unravels the trick.

“And if we come to you together, Tono?”

This is agony, sweet and undefined. He will live in Japan. He will live there because it’s home, because he couldn’t bear to leave, even for Maman. Even for Maman. They will have visits. Tamaki will have _this_. 

For as long as it lasts. Until their flirt with non-symmetry is over.

Until il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée. 

Tamaki looks up.

He asks a question: “Would you?”

 

 

French Proverb: _Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée._

A door must be either opened or shut.


End file.
